Christianity

[Dontaskme]

Note: Today 30 June 2023 I have undertaken the writing of my memoirs.

The Epigraph:

Be the flame, not the moth.

LOL , then you must at once, be really genuine and honest, and warn all those adoring fans you call pussy, that you are not for sale, or to be idolised or to be put on a peddling pedestal..

[Alexis Jacobi]

But, but I am for sale. Well, I mean the Email Course is available as a sober investment for the discriminating mature intellect. (If I recall how the blurb for the course reads).

Everything I do and say is ultra-genuine and ultra-honest. You don’t get to the exalted state any other way, Madame!

I discourage idolization as a matter of course but for some no other type of relationship but worshipful admiration seems possible.

Je le tolère donc.

[promethean75]

Is this an ongoing joke or do you really teach a course? Wait a minute... are u Quentin Robert DeNameland @ 16:15?

[iambiguous]

Ludwig Wittgenstein & Postmodern Biblical Scholarship
Van Harvey wants the facts.

Christian intellectuals have responded in diverse ways to what some secularists believe to be the Achilles heel of the Christian faith; namely, that Biblical scholarship has revealed how untrustworthy the New Testament narratives could be about Jesus, and how little is known for certain about his life and his message.

Again, for some here this becomes a really, really important point of contention. On and on they'll go trying to provide evidence to support the belief that Jesus Christ was more than just [possibly] a historical figure back then. Or to debunk the evidence.

Also, on and on they'll go squabbling over whether or not the Bible is itself the word of God and not just a collection of stories that mere mortals "thought up" and patched together to create the Old and New Testaments.

For me however that all pales next to the need to go beyond "because the Bible says so" or more or less blind leaps of faith. Given all the possible paths to immortality and salvation, I'll need a bit more solid evidence myself. And then the part that swirls around theodicy. Okay, you've convinced me that your God may well exist...but what about all this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_earthquakes
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_l ... _eruptions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... l_cyclones
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tsunamis
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_landslides
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_epidemics
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_deadliest_floods
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_t ... ore_deaths
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_diseases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_extinction_events

The secularist asks, ‘How can one be asked to be a Christian on such historically uncertain grounds?’ Orthodox Christian apologists have tended to dismiss this skeptical scholarship as the product of non-believing positivistic historians, who simply reject the supernaturalistic elements of the Gospels out of hand.

Right, "positivistic historians". And all the rest of us? The "historically uncertain grounds" are more or less applicable?

But secularists found this response less and less compelling as it became increasingly evident that many of the scholars in the forefront of the thinking that has come to these skeptical conclusions are Christian. Consequently another, more sophisticated, Christian apologetic has emerged, which has attempted to save the New Testament picture of Jesus without embracing the supernaturalistic elements in it.

And this has exactly what to do the fate of our souls on the die we die?

And then "for all practical purposes" whatever this...

The sophistication of this apologetic lies in turning the argument about the negative results of Biblical scholarship into a debate about hermeneutics. Their argument is that the skeptical views of the historical reliability of the Gospel narratives result from a positivist model of historiography, in which the historian claims to be an objective inquirer who simply seeks to ‘recreate the past as it really was’, to use the famous phrase of Leopold von Ranke. The historian, like the scientist, tries to sort out the facts of the matter; to distinguish fact from interpretation. But, the new Christian apologist claims, this positivistic model of historical inquiry has been shown to be outmoded for two reasons: the positivist view of science to which it was attached has been refuted; and with it the correspondence theory of truth has become obsolete.

...means?

Your hermeneutic or mine? And in regard to the facts pertaining to the historical existence of Jesus Christ [and the New Testament] any of the "new Christian apologists" here care interpret this...leaving the "supernatural" out of it?

[Dontaskme]

But, but I am for sale. Well, I mean the Email Course is available as a sober investment for the discriminating mature intellect. (If I recall how the blurb for the course reads).

Everything I do and say is ultra-genuine and ultra-honest. You don’t get to the exalted state any other way, Madame!

I discourage idolization as a matter of course but for some no other type of relationship but worshipful admiration seems possible.

Je le tolère donc.

The exalted state has no followers, I don't think you unerstand my excited little bunny hunny wabbit. You cannot buy your way to truth. But in your delusion, you will take the money and run, but you will not be able to take it to where you are running to, the only place you exist for real, the graveyard.

This advice was free.

[Gary Childress]

But, but I am for sale. Well, I mean the Email Course is available as a sober investment for the discriminating mature intellect. (If I recall how the blurb for the course reads).

Everything I do and say is ultra-genuine and ultra-honest. You don’t get to the exalted state any other way, Madame!

I discourage idolization as a matter of course but for some no other type of relationship but worshipful admiration seems possible.

Je le tolère donc.

Some jest about having vices. Some jest about having virtues. I'd give you advice, AJ, but advice is not something I want to give for various reasons.

Hope things work out for you.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

[Belinda]

Christianity has a history: Christianity is a cultural process. What is all the fuss about?

[Gary Childress]

Christianity has a history: Christianity is a cultural process. What is all the fuss about?

The fuss is about whether or not one needs to "accept" Christ as one's "savior" in order to avoid going to hell or eternal damnation (or whatever it is we are said to be avoiding).

Most people on this Earth including me are not convinced that Christ was in fact the "first cause"/"creator" of all that is. I mean, perhaps we could just say, "OK. He was." and leave it at that but then, of course, there would be those who might think that because we don't do or didn't do X, Y, Z, then we must therefore not be "true" "Christians". And therefore, not being "true" "Christians", we would not be allowed to play any reindeer games with the rest of the "true" "Christians".

As far as I'm concerned a person should do the right things with respect to their fellow persons in this world. That is the criteria by which I think a person should be judged. Whether or not a person curses God because of an Earthquake killing thousands in the world "s/he" allegedly created or else praises God in spite of that Earthquake, seems to me to be something that ought not be (nor is in fact--by evidence of what actually does happen) the least bit important to the creator of all that is.

If the creator of all that is wishes persons to bow before it at threat of "eternal damnation" or some other incredibly horrible fate worse than death itself, then that doesn't sound like a "good" or "benevolent" creator to me. So we would have to throw out the notion of a "good" or "benevolent" God, if it were the case that God punishes those who simply do not worship it.

That's what the "fuss" is about. Obviously, there is either a creator/first cause of all that is or there isn't. Either that creator/first cause prefers to be called "Yahweh" or "Jim" (or whatever) and gets mad at people for succumbing to urges that s/he apparently gave us, or that creator/first cause doesn't. All I'm interested in is the truth. I'm not interested in fables, hearsay, shell games, or stories fabricated for God only knows what reason. Truth is what matters to me, because if one isn't doing things according to what is true, then one is possibly doing something that isn't what we 'ought' to do. Unless lying, manipulating, and deceiving are ethical things for people to do.

Granted, there may indeed be a God. Granted a God is probably the only being that could PERFECTLY ensure that and administer justice in a way that is always PERFECTLY maintained and accounted for. However, I suggest that we humans have a sense of what is justice and what isn't. Therefore, I see no reason to think that one cannot possibly even have a valid concept of justice without a God to blindly obey and worship at the penalty of "damnation". We, humans, know justice or injustice when we see it. We even know a corrupt idea of what God is or isn't when we see it. If God doesn't meet our own innate instincts of what is just, then there's a problem in my book with our conception of God being a true one.

I'm a lover of truth and wisdom, not a lover of fable-making, fearmongering, and manipulation through deceit and lies or fantasy. Perhaps that makes me someone unique among people?

¯\_(*_*)_/¯

[iambiguous]

Simply unbelievable!

Well, if I do say so myself.

Nihilism: "the rejection of all religious and moral principles, in the belief that life is meaningless"

Essentially meaningless.

Christianity not only provides mere mortals with a divine meaning and purpose on this side of the grave, this meaning and purpose then continues on for all of eternity on the other side of it.

Many nihilists start with the assumption that precisely because there is no God -- no One True Path to enlightenment, immortality and salvation -- mere mortals "down here" have for centuries sustained endless conflicts regarding possible secular equivalents of God and religion. Ideological, deontological and the like.

You're fractured and fragmented but you respond as if you have the one objective definition and understanding of nihilism.

So you say. Yet over and again I have noted I don't exclude my own point of view from my own point of view. I merely start with the assumption that in a No God world we mere mortals have for centuries now [philosophically and otherwise] attempted to "think up" the secular equvalent of God.

Okay, look around at the world we live in today: how close have we come?

What never ceases to amaze me are those here who have engaged in exchanges with me for years and yet still manage to completely misconstrue my thinking regarding meaning and purpose and value given human interactions in a No God world.

I do not argue that there is no meaning or no morality or no value. I suggest instead that given my own rooted existentially in dasein grasp of human interactions in a No God, it seems reasonable to me "here and now" that neither scientists nor philosophers nor ethicists have come up with a moral agenda that all rational and virtuous men and women are obligated to subscribe to.

What's amazing is how little slack you give people.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

So, the only way his reaction to me makes sense is that above all, he doesn't want to ever believe that my own "fractured and fragmented" moral philosophy might one day become his own. So, for that crucial reason alone I must be wrong!!!

Nobody is attacking you. Nobody is saying you're wrong. You can safely drop your gloves.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

[Dubious]

Christianity has a history: Christianity is a cultural process. What is all the fuss about?

You forgot to add the greatest swindle ever perpetrated as part of its history and cultural process.

[promethean75]

Even worse than the great black Friday gold corner of 1869?

[Gary Childress]

Even worse than the great black Friday gold corner of 1869?

Who knows. Does it matter if dishonesty causes serious problems vs exceptionally serious problems? If dishonesty causes problems then it's doubtful a matter of "if this dishonest act is less serious than another dishonest act unrelated to it, then it must be OK to be dishonest in the least dishonest of the two cases."

[promethean75]

well all that's complicated ends justifying means and greater goods and white lies stuff. taking Kant's extreme position would feel counterintuitive; not lying to your captors despite the fact that if u don't, a million people will die. so we feel like some lying should be permitted. but then that line gets stretched and philosophers start arguing about what constitutes a justification for lying, etc.

then u got the extreme opposite approach with guys like the sophists and Machiavelli who encourage dishonesty and deception in some cases.

[phyllo]

So you say. Yet over and again I have noted I don't exclude my own point of view from my own point of view. I merely start with the assumption that in a No God world we mere mortals have for centuries now [philosophically and otherwise] attempted to "think up" the secular equvalent of God.

Okay, look around at the world we live in today: how close have we come?

You have an excuse for everything you say and for every way that you say it.

Put me on ignore.

phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2023 7:49 pm
What's amazing is how little slack you give people.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

It means I write "meaning" instead of "essential meaning" or "inherent meaning" and you have a conniption.

phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2023 2:49 pm
Nobody is attacking you. Nobody is saying you're wrong. You can safely drop your gloves.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

It means your response was defensive. And there was no reason for it since I wasn't saying anything which was an attack on you.

Furthermore, you personally attacked me by attributing some sort of psychological reasons for the imagined attack on you.

[iambiguous]

So you say. Yet over and again I have noted I don't exclude my own point of view from my own point of view. I merely start with the assumption that in a No God world we mere mortals have for centuries now [philosophically and otherwise] attempted to "think up" the secular equivalent of God.

Okay, look around at the world we live in today: how close have we come?

You have an excuse for everything you say and for every way that you say it.

So you say.

Put me on ignore.

You first.

phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2023 7:49 pm
What's amazing is how little slack you give people.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

It means I write "meaning" instead of "essential meaning" or "inherent meaning" and you have a conniption.

Well, in my view, moral objectivists -- Christians? -- of your ilk "have a conniption" when those of my ilk suggest a crucial distinction between meaning in the either/or world and meaning in the is/ought world. For your ilk, morality is just another component of the either/or world. Either others think exactly as they do about good and evil, or they are wrong. It's just that for some Christians here it also means being "left behind" and/or "burning in Hell for all of eternity".

phyllo wrote: ↑Fri Jun 30, 2023 2:49 pm
Nobody is attacking you. Nobody is saying you're wrong. You can safely drop your gloves.

Seriously, what's that supposed to mean?!

It means your response was defensive. And there was no reason for it since I wasn't saying anything which was an attack on you.

Furthermore, you personally attacked me by attributing some sort of psychological reasons for the imagined attack on you.

So you say.

I'm just defending my own "rooted existentially in dasein" perspective on Christianity.